April 13, 2006

Q: You have some pretty unusual lyrics. Ever come up with anything too weird to use?

Berman: No, but I bought a giant safe because I have so much backlogged writing that has to be processed from the past 15 years. Whenever I leave the house, I'm always convinced it's going to burn down, and I'm going to have to come back and start from the beginning. I'm always imagining a stack of hay or something somehow got in the bathroom and a match falling on it....Q: I read you were once hit on by Tina Louise (Ginger on "Gilligan's Island"). What's the story?

Berman: It was a party at the Whitney Museum [in New York]. All I can say is that I was there, and she wouldn't leave me alone. I was the guard, and she was a guest. We talked all night long. I wasn't physically attracted to her. I knew that she was Ginger, too. I'm pretty sure the first sexual feelings I had were from her slinky, white, sequin dress on the island.

Q: You weren't attracted to her in person? So you're more of a Mary Ann fan?

Berman: I'm not! I'm totally Ginger. The first couple years when I was in New York, I didn't get laid. I felt unentitled to any [action]. I couldn't get the girls who worked on the fifth floor, so I couldn't process that Ginger would let me have her.

"However, he noted that heroin use was widespread among jazz musicians at the time as a vast supply of the drug was targeted at black urban neighbourhoods. He said: 'Modern jazz was a revolutionary music that was rejected by the general public, and heroin, like the music, was defiantly anti-establishment.'

-- related:

[Testifying before Congress in 1948]Harry Anslinger (former head of FBI): "I need more agents."Senate: Why?Anslinger: "Because there are people out there violating the marijuana laws."Senate: Who?Anslinger: "Musicians... And I don't mean good musicians; I mean jazz musicians."[via]

* "Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne." -- Kurt Vonnegut